FAULTY INSULATION

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 146, 21 June 1924, Page 13

FAULTY INSULATION

BANGER FROM HEATING

APPLIANCES.

The cause of many fires, the origin of which is regarded as a mystery, was explained by Fire Brigades Inspector Hugo to the Building Conference yesterday afternoon. Inspector Hugo statod that many people—in fact most people— were under the impression that if a wooden shelf was covered with iron or asbestos the appliance was safe. He showed the members of the conference a wooden shelf that had been taken from a New Zealand school housing some seventy girls. A gas appliance in the bathroom had been standing on a sheet of iron resting on wood. The iron had covered up the fact that the wood underneath had been charred right through. "You can imagine the sort of thing that may have occurred if that wood had continued to burn and had broken into flams when all the pupils had retired for the night," remarked the inspector. He also showed a slab of marble an inch thick on which an electric kettle had been heated.. Through the slab the heat had burnt a hole through paper and into a -piece of cardboard. Tiio samples wer^ shown as examples of the danger of faulty insulation. He s-;»d the only thing to da was to allow at least an inch of air space between the iron, stone, or asbestos and the shelf or bench on whicli it stood. This would bo perfectly safe, and the woodwork would be open to inspection.

The conference recommended that steps should be .taken to render proper insulation imperative.